Inside Higher Ed - Attack of the Memes (February 16, 2012) - With roots in the evolutionary biology of Richard Dawkins, meme theory is something a student might expect to learn about while in class rather than killing time on Facebook. But as higher education has suddenly turned into a hot zone for a certain strain of Web-borne gag, many students are watching meme theory unfold on their own campuses...

Inside Higher Ed - Racial Transfer Gap at California Community Colleges (February 15, 2012) - California community colleges with the lowest student transfer rates to four-year colleges are "intensely segregated" or enroll high percentages of minority students, according to three new reports from the Civil Rights Project ...

CT Board of Regents For Higher Ed - Connecticut Kicks Off Energy Efficiency Program with Projects at Eastern (February 14, 2012) - Connecticut taxpayers will save $136,061 annually thanks to a lighting system upgrade at Eastern Connecticut State University (Eastern) in Willimantic and the replacement of rooftop HVAC units at Willard-Cybulski Correctional Institute in Enfield-the first projects to be funded by Governor Malloy's Lead by Example (LBE) state building energy efficiency program...

Community College Times - Sharing the community college model abroad (February 14, 2012) - Ann McGee, president of Seminole State College in Florida, sees potential abroad. Like a growing number of community college leaders, McGee sees the overseas market as a place to send students for an international experience, recruit new students and even develop partnerships...

Inside Higher Ed - Breaking Virtual Ground (February 13, 2012) - Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced today that registration has opened for its first online course through MITx, its new online spin-off devoted to offering "interactive" online versions of MIT courses to people not enrolled at the prestigious university...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - President to Seek $8-Billion for Job-Training Partnerships Involving Community Colleges (February 13, 2012) - In his budget for the 2013 fiscal year, due out today, President Obama will ask Congress to raise the maximum Pell Grant by $85, to $5,635, and provide $10-billion for job-training programs, according to the White House and sources briefed on Sunday...

Community College Times - Focused on training for available high-skill jobs (February 13, 2012) - President Barack Obama is proposing a three-year, $8-billion Community College to Career Fund to help public two-year colleges and businesses train two million Americans for jobs in high-demand industries, such as health care, advanced manufacturing, clean energy and information technology...

MASSLive - Employers fear community colleges run from Boston (February 6, 2012) - Every one of the 40 employees who work with A.R. Sandri Inc.'s green-energy subsidiary has taken at least one course through Greenfield Community College's renewable energy program...

Inside Higher Ed - Profiting From Federal Aid (February 14, 2012) - For-profit colleges that can accept federal financial aid from students charge about 75 percent more in tuition than those that can't, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which suggests that federal aid might drive up college costs...

Hartford Courant - Artist's Corner: Donna Reed (February 12, 2012) - Donna Reed of Stafford says she is attracted to old farm equipment and rustic barns. Everyone has a dream, she says. "Mine is to travel around New England painting old barns, farms and farm equipment before they're lost forever." ...She has won two ribbons for her watercolors and studied at Manchester Community College...

CT News Junkie - Six Groups Put Together Education Agenda of Their Own (February 15, 2012) -A diverse group of stakeholders in this year's education debate got together Tuesday and laid out their own agenda for education reform. Some of the proposals are similar to what Gov. Dannel P. Malloy proposed last week during his budget address, while others take a slightly different approach...

CT Mirror - Not everyone celebrating Malloy's school choice agenda (February 10, 2012) - The state's vocational and agricultural schools were largely left out of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's plans to increase funding and expand enrollment in nontraditional public schools. "They forgot about us again," Bill Davenport, director of one of the state's 19 agricultural programs, said...

Hartford Business Journal - Demand high for spots in CT tech high schools (February 10, 2012) - Recent uncertainty about the future of Connecticut's technical high schools hasn't dampened the interest of their prospective students...

CT News Junkie - Cafero: Malloy Broke Funding Promise To Norwalk Schools (February 15, 2012) - When Gov. Dannel P. Malloy released his budget a week ago he promised no municipality would receive less education funding than it received last year, but House Minority Leader Lawrence Cafero said Tuesday that the governor cut $72,000 from his city's education grant...

Mashable Tech - Why QR Codes Won't Last (February 15, 2012) - Like most technology fans, I am always ready and willing to try any technology that promises to simplify my life. QR codes seemed to present an accessible and uniform way for people with smart devices to interact with advertising, marketing and media. Those little squares of code seemed to open a world of opportunity and potential. But after using them for a length of time, I shifted my perspective...

CT Mirror - Education heavyweights draw line in the sand on reforms needed (February 14, 2012) - Six days. That's how long it took for six of the state's education heavyweights to back most of Gov. Dannel P. Malloy's education reform package, including requiring teachers to have to re-earn tenure every few years...

Inside Higher Ed - Attendance, Retention, and College Success (February 14, 2012) - "You clearly don't care if I come to class or not." This was in an email that a student sent me. It was after their first Friday class (students at our institution only have class every other Friday - don't ask) complaining that, well, I'm not entirely sure. That Friday we met in the computer lab to set up their blogs that we would be using for the entire semester and compose their first post...

Inside Higher Ed - Friending Students on Facebook (February 14, 2012) - A longtime reader writes: I've been told by one of my employers that I am not allowed to accept friend requests from students on Facebook or any other social media site save Linkedin. In my field (probably in most fields) networking is really important and therefore this is a serious bummer...

Chronicle of Higher Ed - A Call for Success (February 12, 2012) - The Obama administration has been bold in its pursuit of higher-education goals. Most of us are familiar with President Obama's 2020 goals - by 2020 he wants the United States to be first in the world in higher education. He wants every adult American to have at least one year of college or career training...